Reply To: Fallen Affect and Function Expression (Personal Disclosure Included)

[Bera]

Hey, thank you so much for disclosing this. It must be really hard to open up about these things.
Do you think you developed these functions in order to find a coping mechanism or a solution for your emotional problems that were triggered by the abuse? Or do you think you would have developed them anyway?
Also, do you think you had fallen affect BEFORE developing the functions? Or did it start to appear after developing them?
Maybe some childhood pictures could help?
I think one of the main things that need to be fully clarified is if people who went through emotional trauma (and hence have fallen affect because of this) also tend to develop more functions as a method of coping with the trauma or healing...or if people who develop lower functions tend to suffer emotional trauma from the process of developing these functions and then sometimes also develop flat affect (or both, as I think is the current view of CT, no?). Or if in some cases flat affect is just a visual signal that is not necessarily correlated to deep trauma or to any emotional problems, but possibly one that comes with lower functions being developed (so, no actual imbalance exists but different function signals somehow neutralize each other to create this specific look?).
Maybe it would be good to try to have a survey of people with fallen affect and see :
-if they did go through emotional trauma;
-if they were actually diagnosed with any mental problem;
-if any of them tried to develop lower functions using active imagination/visualization or simply used active imagination/visualization with another purpose...and now has some new conscious functions and/or fallen affect (we all know about The Red Book, we all know Jung appears to have had fallen affect, I hope I am not dropping a bomb here :/);
-if they tried to develop functions using other methods and the functions did become conscious.
Actually maybe this survey should also be answered by people who don't have fallen affect, starting with the ones who have conscious lower functions...?
To determine the frequency and hence the causal link between fallen affect and lower functions becoming conscious and which is first, the fallen affect or the function development. AND - if the fallen affect necessarily correlates to emotional problems or not. AND if functions CAN be developed at will and - if so - which methods might be safer.